Sunday, October 27, 2002

Dread and Dreams Travel by Bus in Israel
As is often the case on Israeli buses these days, most of the passengers were soldiers returning to base. They listened to music blasting through earphones. They stared out the windows, their M-16 rifles in their laps, an ammunition clip, in some cases, jammed through the handgrip of the back of the seat before them.

The bus would soon branch to the northeast along the Wadi Ara road, the site of repeated attacks by Palestinian suicide bombers. But the soldiers — sleepy, bored, used to it all — seemed fatalistic to the point of numbness.

"You know the difference between Russian roulette and Israeli roulette?" asked one of them, Capt. Dan Ravitz, 21, putting aside his spy novel. "In Russian roulette, you choose your bullet. Here, you just pick a bus."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/27/international/middleeast/27BUS.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

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